Seafood Industry

Mr McBRIDE (MacKillop) (14:43): My question is to the Deputy Premier. Is the state government doing enough to promote South Australian seafood and that it is safe to eat? With your leave, Mr Speaker, and the leave of the house, I will explain.

Leave granted.

Mr McBRIDE: At an algal bloom update last night at Meningie, it was mentioned that the Premier had recently been to a restaurant where seafood was being advertised as not South Australian.

The Hon. S.E. CLOSE (Port Adelaide—Deputy Premier, Minister for Climate, Environment and Water, Minister for Industry, Innovation and Science, Minister for Workforce and Population Strategy) (14:44): I acknowledge that the member was at a forum that I was part of last night down at lovely Meningie. It was a really good forum, as they all have been. There were lots of people there to participate, to hear from the experts but also to share their experiences and to ensure that their experiences are understood by the decision-makers in government. It was, as always, a very useful forum.

We did talk about particularly, as you can imagine in Meningie, the number of commercial fishers down around the Coorong who have been affected by the algal bloom. But they have been affected in a way that might not at first be immediately apparent to members of the public because, although the Coorong did have an experience of the algal bloom, it is no longer present there. The testing that we are doing at present is showing that there is no Karenia mikimotoi showing up in the tests, which is fabulous.

However, there have been two impacts on the fishers: one is that there has been damage done to part of the environment by the bloom, so they are having to go further out, which involves more costs, of course, to go and get the fish that they are able to catch; but, secondly and much more seriously in terms of their income, people aren't buying fish. South Australians and interstate are not buying enough seafood.

So it was a very heartfelt plea from fishers there to please make sure that the facts of the situation are being conveyed to the public and that any sense of catastrophising is quashed, because it is so important that there is clarity that, if you can buy South Australian seafood, it is safe and it is healthy and it is delicious. It is incredibly unfair for those people whose economic livelihood is absolutely dependent on people being prepared to buy their fish that we have people creating alarmism or, simply through ignorance, making choices that are harmful.

While we have been pushing the argument for a long time and the facts for a long time that, if you can buy it, it is safe—we have been doing that in the media, we have been doing that in response to questions—we are now engaging in advertising to push out the message much more strongly to say, 'Please, it's still delicious, it's still available and you're doing the right thing by the fishos by buying them.'

We showed the advertisement that has been shot at the forum and it went down well, I think. I noticed Pauly Vandenbergh was one of the people, who is one of my favourite South Australians. He was one of the people encouraging people to buy South Australian fish. Please, everyone who is hearing this right now, just take a moment to think, 'When was the last time I had some fish? Did I say to them, "I only want South Australian."?' because we've got to get that message out there.

Let's understand the true implications of this algal bloom, because they are tough, but let's also understand the limits of the impact of this algal bloom and let's not make it bigger than it needs to be, because there are real people with real livelihoods and real families who are being affected by this. So, as much as possible, take the nonsense out, take the politics out and stick with the facts.